Amnestic
by amberpire
Summary: I love her more than I love coke, and that's saying something. But I can't carry Carly in my pocket whenever I need her, and I can't roll over in my bed and snort a line of her when I'm terrified of remembering. ;Sam/Carly;


**Amnestic**_**:** Causing loss of memory._

* * *

Maybe I don't know anything.

I like that idea. Not knowing anything. Being completely void of thought. Becoming this shell of a person and walking around totally empty and even though you have a mouth and eyes and ears you don't really register anything. I don't know why, I just really like the idea.

I'm in my room, forgetting. I like to call this whole process of what I do, forgetting. It sounds good. People don't think of inflamed nostrils and wide pupils when they hear the word, 'forgetting'. Carly gets so mad when she calls me and I say I'm busy forgetting. She storms over to my apartment and I have to stop because I can't forget when Carly is the one thing I'll remember. Even if what I do destroys every brain cell I have, Carly will stand in the ashes of what I've forgotten.

We all have things we would like to forget. That's why we all have methods of forgetting. When Carly misses her mom and she wants to forget all of the wonderful things she remembers, she sings. She sings and sings until her voice goes hoarse. And when Freddie misses his dad and wants to forget all of the terrible things he knows, he does math problems that he finds off the internet and sits there for hours. I used to make fun of him for it.

I'm such a bitch. And I don't mean that just so someone can say "Nah, Sam, you're not a bitch," because I know I am and it's just me stating the truth. I don't need someone to reassure me with lies. I'm a bitch, I've always been a bitch, and chances are in the favor that I will always be a bitch.

I just don't care. I don't care about anyone or anything or my future or my past. Particularly my past, because I've worked really hard to forget most of it. I just don't care anymore. I figured that apathy was better than giving a shit about it.

It's all just so messed up.

See, Carly and Freddie, they have 'healthy' ways of forgetting - I don't fucking know, I'm not a therapist. But it seems pretty healthy to me. Healthier than what I do.

What I do. What I do, people make self-help videos about. They have a self-help groups about it, even. I watched this corny ass movie about it on Lifetime and this girl was doing what I do to forget something pretty similar, actually, but she had this boytoy that was all but humping her leg the whole movie and a loving mom who cried in practically every scene she was in. It was supposed to be heartwarming and whatever the fuck Lifetime intended but as I was watching it, I was smoking a blunt and drinking a can of gross man beer.

This is what I do.

And not just pot and alcohol. That's pretty weak for me. That's _way _weak for me. I only do that when I can't get anything else, when my mom's whore money has run out or I can't find where she's hiding it. I only do the weak stuff when I know I'm going to Carly's in a few hours and I need to be kind of sober, and even then I wobble into her room and pretty much crash on the bed. We don't do much when I go to Carly's. I think she only invites me over at all anymore is because she knows that if I'm with her, then that's a few hours I'm not doing what I really love.

Cocaine.

I like just saying the word, really. It taste the way it sounds when it cracks off your tongue.

I know it's bad, but you don't really think about that shit when you're trying to forget. The consequences of forgetting are worth it, I think. It's worth the addiction. It's worth the jitters, the migraines, the withdrawals. It's worth hanging around the not-so-pleasant side of Seattle searching for someone to deal me anything they have, it's worth missing school because I'm too fucking stoned to have rational thoughts. It's worth spending weeks moving from my room to the bathroom and back again.

It's worth all of it, except maybe one thing.

Carly.

Because I feel like she's walking away from me.

I don't really blame her. I would have left me a long time ago. Freddie already has. I mean, it's not like I want her to walk away from me. I don't. I really don't. I love her more than I love coke, and that's saying something. But I can't carry Carly in my pocket whenever I need her, and I can't roll over in my bed and snort a line of her when I'm terrified of remembering.

I think I'm on this mission to erase everything from my brain. I don't want any of it, because it all trails back like roads on a map to what I'm trying to forget.

I have to forget it.

I won't stop doing coke until I do.

The memories are threatening to swell again and I quickly lean down with a straw halfway up my nose over a balanced piece of shattered mirror where three neat little lines wait so patiently for me. Coke won't go anywhere, it's not going to leave me unless I breathe too hard or sneeze. One line crawls up with the familiar and soothing burn and my brain sparks on for a moment, little bits of electricity shocking down to my eyes and God, it feels good, and I carefully set the mirror on the bedside table and fall back on the sheets. The memories are gone now, pushed back by my savior, that little line of white powder. My heart is pounding at an inhuman rate, speeding against my ribs like it'll fly out at any moment and honestly, I'm really okay with that at this point. I don't mind.

-x-

"Sam?"

I shift and roll away from the voice because even stoned and half-awake I know it's Carly. I should be mad, I hate it when she comes over unannounced like this. I didn't use to. I used to love when she just showed up. But now it drives me fucking crazy because what if I had been snorting a line or something?

Fuck. My lines.

"God damnit, Sam."

I'm still facing away from her but I know she's found the lines on my bedside table. I peel my eyes open and stare at the wall in front of me. My body is tense, my eyes are jerky, and my foot is bouncing quickly against the sheets. My thoughts are still pretty absent. I'm just vaguely aware that Carly is here and now she's mad at me. I just can't say anything. Then she'll go away, and I can go back to dropping bombs of cocaine on my brain until there's nothing left but Carly.

The mattress behind me sinks and sinks and sinks as if Carly is carrying unseen weight and my hands curl into the sheets like if I don't I'll float away.

"When are you going to stop this?" Her voice is barely audible, slightly above a whisper and then the mattress starts shaking and I jerk myself up. My body is gross and damp with sweat, my hair is probably a tangled mess, and Carly turns to look at me with tears puddling in her soft brown eyes and fuck, I've made her cry again. I wrap my stick-like arms around my knees and watch her. I want to touch her, kind of, but I know if I do it'll be like I'm soiling her and I can't do that to her. She just sits there and cries for a while and I don't know what to do, and she probably doesn't either.

Carly is crying so hard she's snotting but I'm not crying. I don't see the sadness in any of this. I'm just trying to forget. I have a right to forget terrible things, right? I don't want it to keep creeping up on me all the time. I just want it to go away.

_I_ want to go away.

"I don't know," I say, but I really want to say "_Never," _because I don't want to stop doing this. Ever. Why would I? Why would anyone stop doing something that feels so amazing, that makes you forget everything if just for a while? And all it takes is some money or sex or something and a quick snort of a line.

Carly moves me away and turns to look at me. I try to focus on her face to make it not seem as bad as it is, but my eyes are still bouncing everywhere and she's fading in and out. I know she notices, but she holds my jerking eyes anyway and finds my bony hands with hers and squeezes them so much it hurts, like she's trying to channel her pain into me.

I don't feel it. Cocaine won't let me.

"I love you," she says, and I know she means it. Not the sister I love you, the best friend I love you, no. She loves me. She's loved me for a long time.

"I love you, too." I say it and I mean it but at the same time I don't know if I could ever hold true to those words. I love Carly more than coke, but her face alone threatens to make me remember. I can't do it. I can't remember it.

"Do you want to die?" Her voice cracks and she sniffles again, snot running over her lips but she doesn't let go of me to wipe it away. Her hair is stuck to her face in long dark strands, captured in the trails of her tears. "Do you want to leave me like this?"

I shake my head, but in a way, I'm lying. I mean, I don't want to leave her. I don't, not really. But I kind of want to die. Just a little. Just a little bit.

"Then why -"

"Carly." I cut her off, shaking my head and wrenching my hands from hers and pressing them into my face. The more she talks the more I feel like I could snort a whole gallon or something ridiculous like that. I love her voice. I could listen to it all day, just not when it's speaking the words that I can't hear without falling apart. "Please, stop."

"I'm just so worried about you, Sam. Don't you think it's time to move on-"

"Carly. Fucking stop." I'm growling into my lap and bouncing my knees and fuck I really want another line or two and I just want her to leave already. I want her to give up on me like Freddie did because Freddie's smart and anyone would be good to follow his lead. "I don't want to talk about it."

"That's why you're doing this!" She shifted on the bed, arms grabbing my shoulders but I just twist out of them and keep my hands against my eyes because I can't look at her, it will all come flooding back to me if I do. "Because you don't want to think about it. You don't want to talk about it. You just want to forget about it. Sam, I-"

"Get out!" I scream and slam my fists to my temples and fuck everything, it's all coming back too fast and my body is shaking and it's not from the coke anymore. "Just get the fuck out, Carly!"

"It wasn't your fault!" She's screaming too and the bed lifts and she's standing over me, watching as I punch my skull trying to knock the memories back and force them to hide behind the wall coke had begun to build, but like a busted dam they're just spilling and flooding my frontal lobe and there he is slamming me against an alley wall and his hands are rough and holding my hips so hard I think they're going to bruise and this is such a contrast to Carly touching me, and I'm screaming through a hand of steel -

"Fuck you, Carly! Fuck you, fuck you, get the fuck out of my fucking room you stupid fucking cunt - !"

I hear a sharp slam and I lift my head and stare in horror as the shard of mirror flings through the air. White powder descends and flurries like fucking snow. Carly still has her hand in a fist and she's glaring so hard at me, like she wishes I was dead or something and then I'm screaming and throwing myself off the bed and into her chest. She puts her arms up and pushes me off with way too much ease and then she's gone, stomping down my hallway and slamming the front door on her way out.

I'm still screaming profanities, crying, punching the wall until my knuckles turn black and then I crumple on the floor in front of my mirror and I stare at the cocaine in my hair.

-x-

I won't let Carly help me. It's not like she's not trying. She is, but when I see her and hear her, all I can think about it the day after and her holding me and stroking my hair and telling me she's going to wash away every place he touched me with a kiss.

I never let her.

I don't want her to touch me. I don't want to ever be touched like that again. I want to drench myself in coke until there's barely any skin left and bury myself in my bed and never come out. I want to forget everything but Carly, and I want to know nothing but Carly. I just want to get to the point where I can see her face behind my eyelids and not think of the touch that scarred me under my skin.

If she ever touches me like that again, she'll be soiled too, by extension. If she kisses me it'll be like she's kissing him. If she makes love to me, he's raping her, too and fuck, I hate that word.

I'm still staring in the mirror at the coke clinging to dirty blonde strands of hair and now I'm out of coke and Carly has just stormed out on me. I need to forget. I need to forget harder. Maybe I should forget Carly, too.

I touch my chest. Ow. It hurts there.

I shove myself off the floor and fling myself out of my room. The hallway feels angry, like Carly left an imprint here. I push into my mom's room and stare at her for a moment, dark hair tangled in the sheets and her legs wrapped around somebody naked. It looks like a dude, but he's on his stomach and his hair is just as long as my mom's. I curl my nose at the scent of sweat and weed.

"Hey!" I nearly scream it, but neither of them move and I guess that makes sense because Carly and I had just been about ready to kill each other and Mom didn't so much as come out to check on us. I ignore them and begin shuffling through Mom's drawers, pushing aside various bottles of beer and bags of bad pot, searching for money. I find a few bucks but I need almost a hundred, so I pull up the man's pants and take his wallet. Inside is a picture of a smiling, fluffy looking wife with a little boy on her knee.

Shame.

I don't know when I took a shower last, but I don't care at this point and I just run a brush through my ratty hair and pull on a big, heavy sweatshirt before walking out the door. I still feel jittery as hell and God damn it's cold outside but I don't care. I don't care about anything and it's better that way.

-x-

"Are ya' sure ya' wanna do this, hm?"

He was starting to piss me off because he has said 'hm' after about everything he's said so far. I'm tearing off my hoodie and tossing it on the floor. This motel room smells like cigars and something dead. The walls are a sick color of pink, like old Pepto Bismol, and the single bed has sheets that look they haven't been changed in weeks. I curl my nose before sinking on the edge of it, my hands twisting in my laps.

I've never done this before - sex favors and all. Does this make me a prostitute? It must. God, I'm just like my mom. Just fucking like her.

"Hm? Ya' sure ya' wanna do this?"

"Yeah, yeah," I say, waving a hand as if I do this all the time or something, like I'm some experienced hooker and not a teenager desperate for a white powder high. I had been getting really freaked out because it was starting to get dark outside and nobody I bumped into had anything I wanted. Some bald guy had heroin, but was demanding sex for it. This guy, this really old fucker with a pot belly the size of a small pig, said he would give me a couple ounces just for a blow-job and I thought - fuck, I'm not going to get anything better than that.

"How old are ya', hm?" He sits next to me and when I look at him he doesn't seem like the type of guy you would expect to do this kind of thing. He looks, well, pretty normal. Like a guy you just bump into at the grocery store or renting movies or something. He has really small eyes, and while they're kind of bright in excitement or anticipation or lust, or what have you, they seem almost sympathetic.

"Who the fuck are you, Dr. Phil?" I don't have any patience for this. "Let me snuff a line and then we'll get started."

He frowns, his lips sagging and sagging and god damnit, I'm going to have his dick in my mouth in a few minutes. My stomach turns and rolls and knots itself in disgust but I need it, I need coke right fucking now.

"I said I'd give it to ya' _after _-"

"I'm going to give one lousy fucking blow-job if you don't give it to me _now_."

He frowns again before sitting up, grumbling as he moved to the dresser to ready our lines. Really, I'm just stalling for time. I don't want to do this. I rub my arms like I'm trying to rub the guilt off of me. What about my dignity? Have I really lowered to this level? What about Carly?

I still remember the last time she kissed me. It was before I got - before I needed to forget a lot of things. It might have been the day before, actually. We were tangled in her sheets watching some corny girly movie that Carly likes and I was stroking her hair, kissing her forehead, and her hands were warm on my waist, fingers circling through the fabric of my shirt. I was happy. I remember that. I had no drugs in my system. Carly was my drug at the time, and being addicted to someone you love is totally incurable. Anyway, she was crying at some sentimental part and I leaned down and brushed her tears away with my thumb. I laughed at her and she socked my shoulder playfully before curling upwards and planting a sloppy kiss right on my mouth. Carly kisses were really special, because she got all nervous thinking she was bad at it. She could have sucked on my nose for all I cared.

"Aye, stay with me, hm?"

I blink and look down. He's holding a plate out to me, a goddamn dinner plate for Christ's sake, with two crooked lines on them. He holds a straw out and I eagerly take the plate and balance it in my lap. As the powder rushes up, I try to forget Carly. I can't suck a random guy's dick with Carly on my mind.

My hands go numb for a minute and he takes the plate away. I only barely hear him snort the other line. My eyes are closed, my head is back, and I'm breathing in really deeply and my whole body is twitching. I love this feeling. I really do. It's like being shocked without the pain.

Hands find my thighs all of the sudden and I blink in confusion, like I totally forgot where I was or something. The guy - what the fuck was his name? John or Joe or something - is leaning over me and trying to find my lips. I throw my hands up, bracing them on his chest and shoving him away. "Get the fuck off of me." I don't want him touching me like that - I don't want anyone touching me like that ever, ever again. Not him, not Carly. No one.

He looks frustrated with his eyebrows tugged down and all. Frustrated and mad. "What? I can't get a little foreplay, hm?"

"No," I say bluntly, shifting further down the bed. "I came here to get coke and give you a fucking blow-job, not - not to let you touch me."

John or Joe or whoever sighs heavily and rolls his eyes, grumbling something about a waste before beginning to work on his zipper. "Fine, whatever."

I close my eyes again. My brain feels particularly buzzy. I'm nervous. I'm scared. I don't want to be here, I don't want to give this nasty fucker a blow-job and then go home with drugs I earned by prostitution like my mom does. I don't want to be dirty like my mom. I don't want to bring home people I don't even know into my house that smell like old socks. I don't want to be this.

But I do want to forget.

And so I stay.

"Come on."

I open my eyes but I don't look at him. My eyes are on the ceiling. My heart is crashing so hard it hurts and I put a hand over it and open my mouth to speak. It's dry and tight. Everything hurts suddenly, like my body weighs a thousand pounds.

"Are ya' alright, hm?" His hand is on my back. I wiggle away, my hand clutching through my shirt and then my ass hits the floor, hard, and my eyes are rolling. Pain is everywhere and everything. I can't see anything. I don't know if I'm screaming in my head or if my vocal cords really are working.

My toes curl, and then I think I'm dead.

-x-

It's really dark here, and it's impossible to forget anything. In fact, I think this is the land of remembering. The land of bad things you would like to forget. There's Dad hitting Mom and storming out. There's Grandma passing away. There's my first serious boyfriend cheating on me, there's Carly almost moving away, there's me getting raped.

Over and over and over, me getting raped.

I shouldn't have taken that way home from school, but I heard there was graffiti or something back there and I just wanted to check it out because who doesn't like graffiti, but I didn't think some guy was going to be back there waiting for someone like me. Just a stupid teenager coming down a stupid alley to look at stupid graffiti. Carly told me not to go. She wanted to go to the Groovy Smoothie with me and I told her it would be just a minute, just a minute and I would be there.

But I wasn't there. I always thought I was strong, but wrestling Carly isn't exactly a feat. The girl is a twig. This guy was a tree of a man and I don't remember much except his hair was blonde and long and scraggly, and I hate his face. I hate it. And I hate that he was able to rape me in the corner of an alley against a wall with the sun still up and no one heard me. No one even walked by.

In the modern streets of Seattle, in a long alley with graffiti on the walls, I was raped.

I had to forget that.

So I'm watching myself get raped from above him and I and they never did find him, the guy that did that to me, and then I'm fast forwarding to my first line and the line after that and the days I spent doing nothing and I wouldn't let Carly touch me after that. I didn't want her to be raped by extension.

I don't know, coke makes you ass-fucking crazy, you know. And that's what I wanted. And that's what I have.

Maybe I'm dead. I don't know. That would be okay, I think, because if I'm dead that means I don't have to feel his hands on me every time I close my eyes and I don't have to have Carly bursting in on me all the time and she can go on and not worry about me like Freddie did. No one would have to worry about me. And, hey, I died by coke. Isn't that the good way to go? High out of your fucking mind?

Maybe.

Maybe I don't know anything anymore.

I like that idea. I really do.

-x-

Someone is kissing me. On my cheek and my forehead and my hand, there are kisses all over.

My eyes peel open and goddamn they're stuck together like hell. I raise one hand and whoever is kissing me stops, and I rub my eyes and don't really want to see where I am because I'm obviously not dead. Unless bad people go to horrendously bright rooms with someone you're not sure of is kissing you.

I finally turn my head and peer through the light assaulting my corneas. Even though she's incredibly fuzzy and my head feels like it's stuffed full of cotton, I know without a moments doubt that it's Carly.

She smiles at me and it's broken but that's okay, I don't mind. She tucks her long hair behind her ears and it's just now that I'm noticing the dark, bruise-like bags under her eyes, like her lack of sleep is abusing her. That surprises me. It makes me wonder if those purple bags under her eyes, the reason she stays up at night, is me.

See? I said I was a bitch. I wasn't lying.

"Hey," I say, and holy shit my throat is dry and somehow Carly knows that, because without a word she hands me a bottle of water she had been holding between her knees. We don't say anything for a while, I just sit there and sip at the water and glance around this big white room. I'm not hooked up to anything like I expected - you always are in movies - but I am in a gown of some sort and the thought that some stranger saw me naked freaks me out a little.

Of course, when I was about to do it for coke, it was hardly a big deal.

I'm a moron. Really.

I don't ask what happened because I can already guess, kind of. I must have passed out, maybe the coke was bad or something, and he either dumped me at the hospital or someone found me and dumped me at the hospital. Either way, I'm at the hospital and Carly is next to my bed and she looks so, so tired.

"Here," I say, and push myself over on the bed. It's pretty wide and the sheets crinkle when I shift. I glance under the blankets and see for the first time in a long time my legs - holy shit. They're like, fucking sticks. My knees look like apples on twigs.

Shit.

Carly doesn't even object. She just crawls right in my bed and she smells like strawberries and I haven't smelled that in so long. I don't want to touch her, not at first, but I can't help it. She's so close to me and she smells so nice and familiar and before I know what the hell's going on I'm holding onto her and crying into her shoulder. I even let her wrap her arms around me and we're both crying because I almost died, I could have died and Carly would have been alone.

She needs me.

More importantly, though, I need her, because I don't want to forget everything anymore.

And then she kisses me hard on the mouth and I try to pull away because all I can see is his hands on my Carly and that disgusts me so, so much, but her hands are tight on my cheeks and she won't let me move. She kisses me and I kiss her until our lips become numb.

-x-

"Twenty-three days," I say, bracing my foot on the wall and kicking off. I spin in Carly's computer chair. She glances up from the bed, a history book cradled in her lap.

"What?"

I keep spinning for a while before kicking my foot out to stop again, reaching for my sandwich. I used to never be hungry. God, I fucking missed food. Especially ham. Oh, glorious, glorious ham.

"Twenty-three days since I did coke." I take a huge bite of my God-given sandwich and stare at the other wall for a moment. I really want coke right now. I do. Quitting cold turkey really, really fucking sucks. The worst part is at night when Carly and I are just lying there because that's when I usually snorted, at night, and I shake and I sweat and I feel like jumping out of Carly's window. She holds me and brushes my hair with her hands but God, God it fucking hurts.

Carly smiles at me with just one side of her mouth and closes her book, slipping off the bed. She's in her pajamas and I'm in mine and since I moved in with her and Spencer I haven't once wished I could forget everything. Looking at her know, all soft in her pink slippers and no more bags under her eyes because of me, it makes these pain-in-the-ass withdrawals worth it.

"I'm proud of you," she says, and she sits in my lap and kisses my neck. That feels good. This feels better than coke could ever make me feel. We sit in silence for a while and I rub her back and my lips are lost in her damp hair. "I'm sorry," she whispers into my shoulder and I sigh. She's apologized to me about a hundred times. "I'm sorry you had to go through ... all of that."

"It's not your fault, Carls. Shit happens. You move on."

"You didn't deserve that. You're a good person."

I tilt my head and look down at her. I was a serial killer compared to Carly. Even after everything - avoiding her, doing drugs instead of confiding in her, nearly prostituting myself to get high, trying to forget _everything _- she still wraps me in her arms at night.

She still loves me.

That kind of love, that's the stuff people write books about and corny music.

I kiss her forehead. She closes her eyes. "Good person or not, shit happens," I repeat. I raise my foot and kick the wall, sending us spinning. Carly clings to me and laughs into my shoulder and I never want her to stop.

* * *

_I don't own iCarly._

I hope you all enjoyed this fic!

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